HIGHWAY RESEARCH TO ENHANCE SAFETY AND MOBILITY OF OLDER ROAD USERS

This paper presents a review of the literature dealing with the safety and mobility of older road users. It begins with comments on the 1988 Research Board Special Report 218, Transportation in an Aging Society: Improving Mobility and Safety for Older Persons, a milestone in the history of transportation research. This review makes three assumptions: old was defined to include people age 65 or older; the criterion used to make judgments was the 85th percentile level of performance of a designated older sample or group; and older volunteers in most of the studies represented the 80% of older people living independently in a community and capable of successfully performing activities of daily living. A major development since the release of Special Report 218 was intelligent transportation systems (ITS) research and development. ITS technology offers not only the promise to assist older travelers but also the potential to increase their burden if the information-processing demands of in-vehicle interfaces are engineered without special regard for older people's emerging needs and changes in capacity. This review covers four areas: highway geometric design; traffic operations; traffic-control devices; and highway lighting. The review concludes with two lists, one containing suggestions for implementation and the other suggestions for research.